


Every day was Valentine’s Day for Eddie Kaspbrak (and he fucking hated it)

by rea_of_sunshine



Series: Reddie, Set, Soulmates! [4]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: (Richie's Dad), (sort of), Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Eddie Kaspbrak is Super Bitter, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Matchmaker Beverly Marsh, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Secret Admirer, Soft Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24066601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rea_of_sunshine/pseuds/rea_of_sunshine
Summary: In which Eddie (somewhat unceremoniously) takes Richie's soulmate situation into his own hands, with the help of a dubious typo, a Hanscom/Marsh Original Plan of diabolical proportions, and a lock that refuses to catch (in that order).An anti-soulmate (sort of) fic.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Reddie, Set, Soulmates! [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587550
Comments: 40
Kudos: 189





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First, a big thank you and shout-out to my bud and beta, [Mere_Mortifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/pseuds/Mere_Mortifer), for sticking this out with me the friggin' three months it took to write. She's awesome, and you should definitely tell her that. 
> 
> Second, Eddie's got his anxiety, and he has a panic attack near the end, so, ya know, be careful. 
> 
> Third, this story is a bit of a departure from the other stories in the Reddie, Set, Soulmate! series, but I think it still counts. 
> 
> Fourth, F's in the chat for _Inside Out_ spoilers. 
> 
> That's all! Be free! Please enjoy my three-month-late pseudo-Valentine's fic!

When news about the up-and-coming Hallmark™ Soulmate Software first broke, Eddie had scoffed. He didn’t need to be a risk analyst to know that willingly giving every piece of your personal information to a massive, barely-beta’d database was fucking stupid, but because he was, in point of fact, a risk analyst, he got paid the big bucks to tell anyone desperate enough to meet their “Hallmark™ hand-selected soulmate” that they were fucking stupid. 

But such is the gnashing maw of corporate America that, three years later, Eddie was fired from his job for telling the people—who _asked_ for his opinion??—that they were fucking stupid for 1) willingly giving every ounce of their sensitive data to a soulless corporation to match them with a soulmate and 2) believing a (randomly chosen, in all likelihood) person could ever be their “up to 99.9% compatible soulmate!” in the first place. 

Suckers and saps, every one of them, and after the frankly astounding marriage boom of HSS’s inaugural year, it seemed like nearly everyone Eddie knew had turned into a sucker and/or a sap. 

The irony of it all was that after Eddie lost his risk analyst job for literally just analyzing the risks associated with HSS use, Hallmark™ Soulmate was the only company hiring. 

He’s now the—“bitchy twerp,” according to their most recent, glowing Yelp review—manager for Bangor’s sorting station. Yes. There are sorting stations. Approximately 4,700 and counting all across the continental U.S.. Once they had realized the public at large was dumb enough not only to buy their ticket into the database but to further shell out what could realistically be trillions on wooing their soulmate with over-priced teddy bears and edible underwear, Hallmark had cornered the market. 

Every day was Valentine’s Day for Eddie Kaspbrak, and he fucking hated it. Today alone, he’d probably shoved 471 heart-shaped chocolate boxes into Bangorians S.M. boxes (Soulmate boxes, as opposed to P.O. boxes, because Hallmark was actually that fucking pretentious to demand their delivery system have a sickly-sweet title). 

Eddie picked up an informational pamphlet off the corner of his desk, uncapped a pen, and artfully scribbled the S.M. into a B.M., snickering to himself. 

It wasn’t like he was a purist or anything. He was a recently-out, middle-aged divorcee. He’d done his time on Match and Plenty of Fish. It was just that the HSS had clean sucked the _love_ out of love. There was none of the chase, none of the choice, and not to mention that it left people like him—who either refused the program, couldn’t afford it, or were rightfully wary of putting their information out for literally anyone to hack into—at a gross disadvantage. As the marriage rates continued to rise, more and more people grew convinced that unless they met through HSS, it wasn’t meant to be. Eddie was waiting with his cynicism and a bowl of popcorn for the inevitable, exponential spike in divorce rates to knock them off their high fucking horses. 

But in the meantime, the front door opened with a gimmicky bursting of harp strings (because if they’re too good for P.O. boxes, they’re too good for regular fucking door chimes), and Eddie straightened the pamphlets back into a neat stack. 

“Hi, welcome to the Sorting Station. How can I help you?” Eddie asked in his best customer-service voice. He could admit that it wasn’t a very convincing voice, but whatever. When he glanced up, he found himself staring, first, at a set of ridiculously broad shoulders, and second, at what may have been the most perfectly crooked grin Eddie had ever seen. 

“Hi,” the man said. He shifted his weight, hands in his pockets. “My, uh, my buddy convinced me to try this whole Hallmark Soulmate Software crap, and I’m here to meet my soulmate, I guess?” 

Eddie stifled a roll of his eyes. 

“Well, unfortunately, we don’t coordinate soulmate meetings. We simply facilitate correspondence. Have you brought a Hallmark-approved parcel with you, or would you like to see our available purchase options?” 

“Oh. I guess I’ll buy one,” the guy said. His voice lilted up like it was a question, and Eddie had to remind himself that it did not matter how cute the guy looked when he was confused. It did not matter at all. 

“Great. We have several wonderful package deals,” Eddie said, drifting into auto-pilot. Not even the handsome man in front of him could make spieling about variety chocolates and song-o-grams and the effectiveness of perfume bottles over jewelry interesting. 

“Don’t you have just, like, a card or something?” the guy asked abruptly, cutting off Eddie’s speech and managing to sound completely overwhelmed. 

Eddie blinked. No one had ever asked him for just a card before. A smile flashed across his lips before he could stop it. 

“Actually, no,” he said.

The guy snorted. 

“Hallmark doesn’t sell cards anymore?” he asked, and the irony was not lost on Eddie. 

“Don’t need to, I guess,” Eddie said with a shrug, still smiling. 

“Yeah, I guess not, charging—” He lifted the tag on one of the display teddy bears. “—holy shit, thirty-nine dollars? For one teddy bear?” 

“Between you and me, I think they charge so much for the bears to do the sorters a favor. Those bears are a fucking nightmare to get inside the boxes.” 

Eddie felt his face warm. He didn’t usually curse at the customers, but this guy just threw his head back and laughed. It did not matter how cute he looked laughing either. It did not matter, it did not matter.

Eddie cleared his throat and dipped into his desk drawer for a sheet of paper. 

“Listen,” he said, passing the paper over. “I’ll go ahead and deliver it, if you want to write a note or something.” 

The guy blinked. 

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He dug a pen out of his pocket and clicked it before staring down at the paper for a long while. Eddie tried not to watch him. “What are you even supposed to say when you’re introducing yourself to your soulmate for the first time?” the guy asked eventually.

Eddie glanced back over at him and found him already staring earnestly. Eddie tried not to go hot under his gaze. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie said honestly. “I guess you just say normal first-meeting things. Your name, hobbies, that stuff.” 

“What’d you say to your soulmate the first time?” 

Eddie hesitated. HR had told him, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t allowed to mention to customers that he didn’t participate in the program. 

“I wrote a poem,” Eddie said. Then, he grinned, like joking was enough to make the lie alright. The guy smiled, so Eddie thought it probably was. He bent his head back down over his sheet, scribbled a few lines, and folded it in half. 

“Thanks, man,” he said as he passed the paper to Eddie. Once his hands were free, they returned to his pockets. 

“Sure,” Eddie said. He set the note gratefully aside and turned to his computer. “If you’ll just tell me your name, I’ll figure out where this is supposed to go.” 

“It’s Richie. Richie Tozier,” the guy—Richie—answered.

Eddie keyed his name in and pulled up the profile. He could see everything there was to know about Richie Tozier in an instant. He’d grown up right here in Maine. He had a surprisingly good credit score for a man who wore a flannel patterned with neon sombreros under his jacket. He had a soft spot for turtles. His soulmate’s name was Michael Hanlon. The whole system was crap. 

“Wonderful. I’ll make sure this is delivered, Mr. Tozier.” 

“Ew, I might be forty, but please never call me that again,” Richie said, and Eddie quirked an eyebrow at him. 

“Right. Sorry,” Eddie said, knowing he didn’t sound sorry at all. 

“So, how does this work anyway?” Richie asked, rocking slightly on his feet. 

“We’ve got a wonderful informational pamphlet for your perusal,” Eddie said. He put his customer service voice back on as he waved to the pamphlet stack, and he put it on thick enough to make Richie grin again. Eddie told himself sharply that it didn’t matter how good he looked grinning. 

Richie reached out, picked a pamphlet off the pile, and promptly snorted. 

“Our sorting facility,” Richie read, in a voice that sounded startlingly like the HSS commercials flooding the airwaves, “Is home to thousands of _B.M. boxes_ , special-tailored to the needs of you, the city, and your soulmate.” 

Eddie nearly choked. 

“Must be a typo,” Richie said. He raised an eyebrow, grinning. 

“Y-yeah,” Eddie managed. Richie just grinned wider. He flicked the pamphlet on the edge of the desk and turned on his heel. 

“Thanks again. I’ll check the B.M. box next week,” Richie said before disappearing through the door to the sounds of gimmicky harps. 

Eddie let his head fall onto his forearms. The system was crap. 

After a moment of calming breaths, Eddie stood and made his way into the catacombs of S.M. boxes. He found Michael Hanlon’s box, slid Richie’s note inside, and went back to his desk. 

For the next week, Eddie filed and forced smiles and crammed over-sized, over-priced teddy bears into the hearts of his clients. 

He waited for Richie, and a week later exactly, Eddie glanced up from a grossly-hectic lunch rush to see Richie standing at the back of the queue, surrounded by the ever-present reddish sheen of Valentine's decorations inside the store, already watching him. Eddie swallowed and tried not to trip as he went to retrieve a package for the soulmate-seeker he was already dealing with. 

He grew increasingly more fuck-up prone as Richie crept closer and closer in the line. By the time that he was standing in front of Eddie, leaning on the desk with a grin, Eddie was just glad he wasn't holding scalding coffee to toss right down the front of him. 

“Heya,” Richie said. “How’s the love-making business?” 

“Excuse me?” Eddie spluttered. Richie’s grin only grew. 

“You’re basically Cupid. I bet you’ve got a cherub-y name like Danzel or Maximillian or Aladdin.”

“Aladdin?” Eddie scoffed. 

“The dreamiest of all the princes,” Richie said, batting his eyelashes dramatically. Eddie rolled his eyes. 

“Debatable.” 

“So, what is it?” 

“Obviously, it’s Flynn Rider.”

“That’s objectively untrue and also not at all what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“What’s your name, Cupido?” 

“Oh. It’s Eddie.” 

A new voice cut in. “Hey, maybe quit flirting while the rest of us are trying to find _real_ love.”

Eddie shrunk. 

“Right,” he said, and excused himself to check Richie’s box. 

He already knew it was empty, and more than that, he knew that Richie’s soulmate, this _Michael_ guy, hadn’t even cared enough about Richie to pick up the card. 

Not that Eddie like…cared, or whatever. 

As he walked back to Richie empty-handed, he told himself it was just because he felt bad for the guy that his stomach was tying itself in knots. It was only pity. 

“Sorry, man,” Eddie told him once he got back to the front desk and the still-growing line of grouchy saps. “Nothing yet.” 

Richie’s posture deflated a little. 

“Oh,” he said. Then, he whipped a smile up onto his face and shrugged. “Okay, thanks anyway. I’ll check back soon, I guess.” 

Eddie opened his mouth to say more, maybe to reassure Richie that a week wasn’t an abnormally long wait time to hear back from a soulmate, or maybe to ask if he wanted to leave another note, or maybe to ask what it was that he loved so much about turtles, but then Richie was turning away, and the next customer stepped up to his desk, and the annoying harp-noise danced through the air again. 

It was more than three weeks before Eddie saw Richie again, and each day that passed, Eddie grew more and more anxious about the prospect of him showing up again. The thought nearly consumed him. Which, he knew, was stupid. He knew that. He didn’t have any right to obsess over the love-life of this near-perfect stranger, but each day that passed was another day that Richie’s letter for Michael Hanlon went unclaimed and another day that brought Eddie a confusing mix of relief at that fact and guilt over his own relief. 

Eddie didn’t even really know the guy, but he knew that just about everyone deserved to find happiness. Even if that meant finding happiness through the world’s most skeevy and corporatized key party. 

When Eddie finally glanced up through the lunch rush and saw Richie Tozier’s crooked grin smiling down at him from the front of the queue, his stomach swooped so hard he thought he might fall over. 

“Hi,” Eddie breathed, trying to brace himself against his desk in the most inconspicuous way possible. 

Richie looked entirely unfazed, smile never wavering. 

“Hey, Eds,” he said. “How have you been?”

Eddie blinked. How had he been? Well, he’d made himself sick on the daily over the thought of hurting the feelings of some guy he barely knew, had sprung a leak in his already-shitty apartment’s kitchen sink, and had somehow been roped into walking his neighbor Bev’s dog while she and her fiancé were in Milan for fashion week, to whom he was most _definitely_ allergic. (The dog, not Bev. He was, as far as he knew, not allergic to Bev. They got drinks on Thursday nights and bitched about Hallmark’s grand scheme, among other things.) Not to mention that Eddie had never, never once in his many months of working retail, ever been asked how he’s been by a cute customer. 

He was ashamed to say it was enough to fluster his response.

“Busy,” he blurted finally. 

“Yeah, I thought I was gonna get trampled just trying to get through the door,” Richie said, glancing back behind him at the rest of the line. They glared back at him, and Eddie leaned a little closer, dropped his voice conspiratorially. 

“Between you and me, you still might,” he said. 

Richie stared at him for a second, then let out the most curling, squirrellish giggle Eddie’d ever heard in his life. It warmed him from head to toe, even more as Richie burned red and cleared his throat.

“Holy fuck, I dunno what _that_ sound was. I’m nervous. Sorry.” Richie’s hands wrung round in front of him, and the motion tore Eddie out of the quiet little bubble between the two of them. He had to sharply remind himself why Richie was there.

He straightened away from Richie.

“Right…sorry, Richie. Still nothing,” Eddie said, offering him what he hoped was a sympathetic frown. Richie’s grin drained away, and he swallowed sharply. The disappointment was practically palpable on him, and Eddie ached. His mouth was moving before he could stop it. “Don’t take it personally. Some people don’t even check their boxes but once like every month.” He didn’t want Richie to take him up on the scarcity of a monthly visit, and yet, he kept fucking talking, “I even know a few who only check them on Valentine’s day!” 

Eddie wanted to slam his head into the desk. 

But what he’d said was true, actually. His friend Stan had ordered a box for himself and his wife, Patty. They used it annually as an excuse to get into the city and re-romance one another. It was pretty gross, in Eddie’s opinion, but he was just a big ol' homo, so what did he know about straight wooing strategies? 

Richie’s mouth ticked up into a half-hearted smile. 

“Reminds me of elementary school,” he said, and though the connection didn’t make much sense, Eddie got it. He remembered his whole class fleeing to their cubbies every Valentine’s day in elementary school and pilfering through the various notes and candies they’d all gotten, the one day a year they actually gave a damn about each other. Eddie, surprise be to no one, never really cared for the tradition. 

“Exactly,” Eddie said, smiling softly, and Richie returned it. 

“Okay…” Richie said after a beat. He took half a step backwards, and Eddie had to stop himself from leaning forward to make up for it. Richie went on, “Well, I guess I’ll get out of your hair. Let you get back to, er, couriering? Courting? Court-couriering?” 

Eddie smiled at him, feeling warm all over.

Richie gave him one last fleeting grin before turning away, leaving Eddie with about half a second to take in the sea of people he’d have to deal with after Richie left, absorb the bitter sting of wanting more time with him, and decide to open his mouth again. 

“Hey, Richie,” Eddie said. He’d been just about to step out of line, already half-turned away, but he paused when Eddie said his name and glanced back. 

Eddie swallowed. He had every intention of telling Richie that they had a notification system in place, that Eddie could sign him up to be alerted when someone put something in his box, that he could save himself a trip. 

What came out instead was, “If you, uh…If you want to skip out on the rush next time, we’re usually pretty empty in the evenings.” 

Eddie shifted his weight as the words finished leaving his lips, internally berating himself for making an under-handed pass at a guy who was so clearly believing of the method of the Hallmark™ Soulmate System. He knew his face was burning, felt so sure that what he’d said matched so exactly what he’d meant— _we’re not busy in the evenings, I want more time with you, please come in the evenings when I can have more time with you_ —that Richie would be immediately revolted. But Richie just smiled at him again, a little more genuine this time, and Eddie’s breath released slowly. 

“Thanks, Eds. I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, then he was gone, and Eddie felt like a deflating balloon. 

As the days turned into weeks turned into a month, Eddie wanted to slap himself for ever putting the idea of a month-long absence in Richie’s brain. 

It was fine! It was fine. He just…he was _worried_ about Richie, is all. Worried that his letter would never be picked up. Worried that it _would_. Worried about what impact either scenario would have on that perfectly-stupid grin of his. It was a purely platonic concern. 

But when Richie walked through the doors over a month after the last time he’d done so, Eddie was willing to admit that all the air seemed to be knocked out of him. 

Richie smiled as soon as he set his eyes on Eddie, but there was something hesitant in it, more distant than Eddie had ever seen him. (Not that he’d seen him enough to _really_ know the differences between his smiles, but he did spend enough time thinking about them.) (Fuck, okay, scratch that.)

“Hey,” Eddie said, leaning his elbows on the counter and grinning in the stupidly gummy way that seemed hell-bent on crawling out of him whenever Richie was near. 

“Hey,” Richie answered. He stepped definitively up the counter, hands in his coat pockets, and glanced around absently, taking in the tacky, hung-up hearts and cupid arrows. 

Richie did…not look good. Well, he looked _good_ , but he didn’t. He looked like he’d been through the wringer recently, sallow and limp. Eddie’s smile fell. 

“Wow,” Richie went on, still glancing around the shop, empty, save for the two of them. “You weren’t kidding about it being dead in the evenings.” 

“Yeah, we’re closing up pretty soon,” Eddie said, eyeing Richie cautiously. Richie blinked.

“You are? Oh, shit. Sorry, I can, I can come back if—” 

Eddie pushed up off his elbows. 

“What? No, stay,” he said, probably a little too quickly. He tried to exhale out some of the nervous energy Richie always brought, now only doubled by Richie’s less-than-tip-top appearance. “I mean, it’s no trouble. I’m here until closing anyway.” 

Richie’s half-hearted smile returned, and he stood there with it on his face for a beat, just staring at Eddie. Then, he let out a slow exhale of his own. 

“So…what’s the verdict, Doc? Am I gonna live to see a happy life?” Richie’s face danced like he was telling a joke, but his voice gave him away, warbling the slightest bit before trailing off. If Eddie didn’t know better, he’d even say there were tears lining the soft sweep of his eyelashes behind the glasses. The sight, in equal measure to the words themselves, was enough to send a chill down Eddie’s spine.

“Of course you are, Rich,” Eddie said. A frown pushed up over his face, but Richie just smiled on absently. He drew in a breath.

“But no letter?” 

Eddie watched Richie for a long moment, the barely-there tremble of his lip, how his hands seemed to be shaking in his pockets, the limp plaster of his hair. He shook his head the minutest amount, and in response, a tear rolled down Richie’s cheek. 

“Fuck,” Richie gasped. He laughed wetly and pushed his palms up under his glasses, scrubbing hard at his eyes. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. Wow. I didn’t mean to come in here and cry like a goddamn spaz.” 

“Richie,” Eddie started hesitantly. Richie didn’t take his hands off his eyes, and he was breathing deeply and roughly through his nose. “Is everything alright? Are you okay?” 

Richie pushed hard at his eyes one last time, and finally let his hands fall. His dark eyes were bloodshot, and his smile was just as empty as it had been when he first walked in. 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. I just…” He laughed again and looked away, his lip trembling. When Eddie managed to draw his eyes back over, Richie swallowed and raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. “I just really could have used a soulmate tonight, you know?” 

Eddie, his own stoicism about the system aside, felt the words as if they’d sucker-punched him. Hallmark was crap, but the idea of a soulmate, someone made exactly right for you, someone you could share your whole world with, someone to support and be supported by, someone to weather the loneliness…Eddie craved that so much it hurt sometimes. 

Eddie was working to swallow the unexpected lump in his throat when Richie spoke again.

“Fuck, I really am sorry, man. I know you don’t want to sit here and listen to a goddamn sob story. I’m so sorry.” Richie shook his head, wiped his eyes again, and shifted the barest amount like he was about to leave, and everything, _everything_ in Eddie recoiled at the thought. 

“Do you want to get a drink with me?” Eddie blurted, so loud in the quiet before lock-up that it made even him jump. He didn’t flinch away from Richie though, just stared up at him with wide, earnest eyes as Richie stared back. 

“No. No, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Richie said after a beat. 

“You’re not. I’m asking you,” Eddie said. 

His heart was tumbling around in his chest, nearly into his throat, reminding him that this was inappropriate, that Richie wanted his _soulmate_ not a middle-aged divorcee with an anxiety disorder. But he didn’t look away, and neither did Richie. 

“I don’t drink,” Richie said after a long moment. 

Eddie, for all the times he’d sworn he’d felt like a deflated balloon when Richie left, finally knew what it felt like to be a popped balloon, cavernous, stunned. 

“Oh,” Eddie said, shame burning all the way up his neck as he dropped his eyes. He knew it was dumb, but the blatant rejection stung all the way down his spine. It was kind, as far as rejections went, a _sorry, I’m can’t_ instead of an _I’m gonna bash your brains in for hitting on me_ , but it still stung. He took half a step back on instinct, but he didn’t get too far before Richie’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. 

“No, I mean. I’m sober…like ten years sober, now.” Eddie’s eyes flicked back up to Richie. Richie let go of his arm, and Eddie tried not to mourn the loss of it. 

“Congratulations,” Eddie said, a careful hope returning, blooming fresh. 

“Thank you,” Richie answered. Something of a genuine smile quirked up to his lips.

Eddie felt relief, full-bodied and beautiful, tear through him, but before he could analyze it too much, Richie was speaking again. 

“I would very much like to get a cup of coffee, though,” he said, “If you’re interested?” 

“Yeah?” Eddie breathed, and Richie nodded. 

“Yeah. But please don’t feel obligated. I know I just caused a whole-ass scene, so you probably—”

Eddie cut him off with a snort.

“I would hardly call a conversation between two people a _scene_ , Richie,” Eddie said. Richie’s something-close-to-genuine smile grew wider, and Eddie’s heart thumped rebelliously. He shrugged. “I want to. You said you needed a soulmate, and…well, I may not be your soulmate, but I can at least be your friend, right?” 

Richie’s smile tipped a bit. 

“I’d like that, Eds,” he murmured, and Eddie smiled. 

“Don't call me that.” 

It didn’t take long to close down the sorting center, and Richie followed him around the facility with wide eyes, taking in the store room of their dumb sentiment-traps and _ooh_ -ing over aisles upon aisles of cubby holes. 

“What happens to all of them? Like, where do they go?” Richie asked, his head tilted back as he took them all in. He glanced back at Eddie. “And more importantly—” He grinned. “—how do you reach the ones at the top?”

Eddie huffed.

“Okay, first of all, fuck you, and second of all, didn’t you read the pamphlet?” 

“Of course, I read the pamphlet!” Richie said, pressing a hand into his chest and looking back very seriously at Eddie. Then, his serious-face cracked, and he was grinning. “No, I did not read the pamphlet.”

“Slacker.”

“Every time I picked it up, I was so off-put by the vulgarity of the _B.M. boxes_ that I couldn’t concentrate.” 

“Oh, you’re so full of shit,” Eddie snapped back, laughing. Richie shrugged and fingered the leg of a bear practically bursting from one of the boxes. Eddie snapped the light off and waved Richie back towards the front. 

“Better me than the Soulmate boxes, I suppose,” Richie answered as they made their way out onto the main floor. 

“Ah, yes, nothing says, ‘I wanna bone you ‘til your teeth fall out,’ quite like a box full of shit, huh,” Eddie said absently as he bent to power down his computer. When he straightened, Richie was leaning in the doorway behind him, smiling a little. “What?” Eddie asked, suddenly self-conscious. 

“Thanks for getting coffee with me,” Richie said after a moment. Eddie tried to will his cheeks to keep from heating, glancing away, fighting a smile. 

“We haven’t gone yet.”

“Yeah, but still. Thanks for offering.” 

“Yeah, well,” Eddie shrugged. “Someone’s gotta reward the men who openly cry in public.” He knew his eyes were dancing, flirting, even, and part of him expected Richie to take offense or think his teasing was genuine. Richie just grinned broader. 

“If you wanna see the waterworks really start, just ask me how I felt during _Inside Out_. I cry like a baby every goddamn time.” 

Eddie laughed and walked to the door with Richie on his heels. It gave one last, forlorn blat of harp-noise before Eddie pulled it shut behind him and locked it. 

“No, that’s fair. I’ll give you a pass on that one,” Eddie said as he pocketed the keys. 

“It’s so fucking sad, right?! Like, even—okay, unpopular opinion here, but Riley’s struggle with depression is just as bone-achingly eviscerating as Bing-Bong.” 

“God, can you believe that’s a kids movie?” Eddie asked. 

“A _magnificent_ kids movie,” Richie corrected. 

Richie started down the street, and Eddie followed him. Simple as that. 

“You know, I always wanted to get into voice acting,” Richie said as they walked. 

The streets were quiet. It was eight p.m. on a Wednesday, and the streetlights were humming over them. Richie seemed to be playing a game with the light they dropped: long strides in it, short, quick ones out. Eddie’s mouth quirked. 

“You’d be good at it,” Eddie said, watching the quick staccato of his footfalls as they passed under a broken bulb. Richie looked over at him, grinning.

“You think?” 

Eddie hummed an affirmative. 

“Well, buttah my ass an’ call me a biscuit, sugah, I do declah! You cupids sho' know howta make a lady blush,” Richie crooned, his voice rising and trying to cram itself into a truly, _truly_ awful impression of a Southern belle. Eddie threw his head back and laughed. 

“Oh, God! I take it back!” 

“I used to drive my friends crazy with the voices,” Richie said in his own voice, grinning. 

“ _Used_ to?!” Eddie spluttered. 

“I’ve got loads of them. I’d spend a month at a time on one voice, ya know, grinding for that improvement.” 

“Did that work out for you?” Eddie asked. He felt like his eyebrows were glued to his hairline, amusement leaking all over him. 

“Not really,” Richie said as they passed back into the light. The squirrelly giggle tore up out of him again, the streetlight above turned him golden, laughing, crinkling eyes, and Eddie thought, _oh fuck. Oh. Fuck_. Richie’s smile settled. “What about you?” he asked, and Eddie halfway-startled. 

“What about me?” 

“What’d little Eddie wanna do with his life?” 

“Oh,” Eddie said. He looked back out to the empty road and smiled. “You know, I really wanted to be a firefighter.” He hadn’t thought about that in years. Somewhere close to thirty. 

“Yeah?" Richie asked, raising his eyebrows and sizing Eddie up a little. "That doesn’t seem like as unrealistic of a dream as mine of taking over every role within the all-allusive _Muppet Babies_ franchise. What stopped you?”

“Asthma.”

“Oh. Yep. That’ll do it.” Richie grinned again, and as curious as Eddie was as to what had happened to make Richie come into the store and cry, he wouldn’t ask. He was just glad to see some of the color back in Richie’s face, some joy back in his eyes. 

They turned a corner, and a cute little coffee shop came into view. Eddie had been there a few times. It was a small, intimate place with warm lighting and an artsy vibe. It was nice. He liked their coconut scones. 

Richie tugged open the door and waved Eddie in—Eddie didn’t think _that_ was cute at all, no fucking sir—before waving to the college-aged barista.

“Hey, Luna. Boss man in?” he asked, and the barista smiled. 

“Hey, Richie. Yeah, he’s in the back prepping for tomorrow. I’ll let him know you’re here. Can I get you guys something in the meantime?” 

Richie turned to look at Eddie expectantly. 

“Oh, uh…I’ll have a peppermint mocha?” Eddie said. He felt his voice lilt like he wasn’t sure, and Richie raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Yeah. That’s it.” 

“Sure,” the barista said with a smile, picking up a mug and tapping his order into the register. “You want the usual, Richie?” 

“Yeah, thanks, Luna,” he said and passed her his card. 

“Oh, you don’t have to get mine,” Eddie protested, but Richie waved him away. 

“It’s literally the least I can do. You saved me from spending another pathetic night alone drowning my sorrows in Phish Food and Parks and Rec.” 

Eddie bit back a grin. 

“I love that show.” 

“Right?” Richie said enthusiastically as he tucked his card back into his wallet. 

“I’ll bring these out for you,” Luna said, and Richie smiled at her before moving towards one of the small, hand-painted tables near the back. 

“You come here a lot?” Eddie asked as they settled in. Then, he wanted to kick himself for basically asking, _So, you come here often?_ like he was some douche trying to slide into home. Richie didn’t seem to notice, just leaned back in his chair and slung an arm across the back of the adjacent one. Eddie tried not to notice how broad it made him look. ( _Tried,_ being key…)

“Yeah, my buddy owns the place. I was working a shitty radio job when he first opened it, so I’d come here like Oliver Twist begging for scraps. He always fed me though. And kept me caffeinated, which was sometimes more important than the food.” 

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah, I think he got in the habit of it, though. It took me four years to convince him I was finally making enough money to pay for a two-dollar coffee.” Richie let out a small laugh, and Eddie couldn't help but smile. 

“You still work in radio?” Eddie asked, watching with rapt attention as Richie plucked a sugar packet out of the cup between them with the hand not lounging across the neighboring chair. He wove it between his fingers, flipping it, shuffling it around like a card trick. 

“Yeah, actually, but it’s not nearly so shitty. They gave me my own show a while back, so now I just sit around and play music all night, talk to people, that kind of thing. I even do my Voices sometimes.” Richie wiggled his eyebrows, and Eddie snorted.

“And you have _listeners_ ,” Eddie asked, grinning. Richie threw his head back and laughed. 

“I mean, I hope so! You should come by some time, see the Trashmouth in action.” Richie smiled at Eddie, soft and pliant, and Eddie wanted to melt.

“Like you aren’t a trashmouth enough when you’re not on live radio,” Eddie laughed. “Besides, I’m sure your bosses would just love me distracting you.” 

“I’m my own boss, who cares? And besides, I distract you enough. It would only be fair.”

“You come in like once a month for ten minutes. That’s hardly distracting,” Eddie said, though he knew it was absolutely a lie. He was distracted by Richie even when Richie wasn’t there. 

“Still. I bet the listeners would love this kind of titillating banter.” Richie’s eyes sparkled, but before Eddie could get well and truly flustered by the sight of it, Luna appeared at his shoulder with two steaming mugs.

“Here you guys go,” she said. “Need anything else?” 

“No, I think we’re good. Thank you,” Richie told her, and she left again for the register. Richie took a sip of his coffee, then dumped in the sugar packet he’d been fidgeting with, smiling sheepishly when Eddie raised an eyebrow at it. “I feel ridiculous asking her to add more sugar when I already ask for four pumps of the syrup.” 

“Jesus! You’re gonna get diabetes, man,” Eddie laughed. Richie just shrugged. 

“What about you?” he said after a moment. 

“What?” 

“Well, you work at the sorting station but don’t trust the system,” Richie said, grinning broad and teasing, and Eddie worked not to feel warm under it. 

“What makes you say that?” 

“The _B.M. boxes_ kind of blew your cover,” Richie said, still grinning. Eddie took a long swallow of his coffee. It was hot and delicious and not nearly enough to calm him. Richie went on. “So, what’s the story?”

Eddie pressed his lips together. The story was that he thought the whole system was crap and that it was grossly optimistic and artificial and that he was sort of horribly grateful for it because he’d never have met Richie without it and that he thought if he told Richie even a smidge of how he really felt about any of that, Richie might never come into the store again. 

“You aren’t happy with your soulmate?” Richie asked softly. The teasing in his eyes drained away and turned into something softer, sadder. Almost like he was hoping Eddie could be happy so that he could be happy. He knew this was his opportunity to come clean, to tell Richie he didn’t really have a soulmate and that he wasn’t sure if anyone _really_ did, but he suddenly remembered how broken Richie had been earlier. 

_I just really could have used a soulmate tonight, you know…_ and Eddie couldn’t take that from him. 

Eddie sighed.

“It’s not even that,” he said, scratching at a bubble in the mug’s glaze. “I just think there’s so much room for disappointment in the soulmate system.” Eddie couldn’t help but look up at Richie. Richie smiled wryly like he felt the call-out. “I think you can be just as unhappy with your soulmate as you can be happy without them, you know?” 

“That’s just life, isn’t it?” Richie said. He picked up another sugar packet, flicked it around his fingers. 

“Exactly. I don’t believe that Hallmark is the magical solution to all of our problems.” 

Richie sighed, and Eddie glanced up, scared he’d crushed his hopes and dreams, but Richie was just staring a little wistfully out of the nearby window, watching a couple walking past, laughing together. 

“I know it’s a little naïve. Before I agreed to try it, I thought it was crap, too, you know? But then when I did, and I got the letter that I’d been partnered up with someone…I don’t know. I was so hopeful. More hopeful than I’d been in a long time.” 

Eddie got it. He’d seen firsthand the hope that HSS had given people, and he couldn’t fault them that. Even if he thought that, ultimately, the hope was misguided. 

Richie flicked the sugar packet at Eddie, grinning. It smacked him squarely in the forehead. 

“Look where that got me, huh?” Richie said. 

“It got you a tour of the facility, you ungrateful twat,” Eddie snapped, throwing the sugar packet back at Richie when he grinned.

“Not to get grossly sentimental, but I really appreciate you coming out with me,” Richie said. His eyes fell, and he was smiling something soft and sad again. “I, uh…my dad died a year ago today, and I didn’t really want to be alone.” 

Eddie felt it like a punch to the gut. The anniversary of his dad’s death was the worst time of year, maybe worse than his mom’s, even though he’d gotten more time with her. Maybe because he’d gotten more time with her. 

“I’m so sorry,” Eddie said when he could. “Were you close?” 

Richie smiled a little and shrugged. 

“Not really. I mean, we didn’t have a bad relationship or anything, but I was always closer with my mom. I know this is hard on her. I wanted to go down so we didn’t have to be alone, but she asked me not to. What can you do, you know?” 

Fuck, Eddie wanted to hug him. Wanted to gather this lanky mess of a man against him and just fucking hold him. Tell him he didn’t have to be alone. 

He settled for reaching across the table and laying a hand on his forearm. 

“I’m really sorry.”

Richie glanced up at him through his lashes, eyes dark and misty behind his glasses, and smiled. 

“Thanks, Eds.” 

Eddie was just about to say something else when Richie glanced up and past him. 

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie heard a new voice say, low and close. Eddie started and turned to see a man with a flour-specked apron grinning at Richie. 

“Mike!” Richie said, the seriousness of their previous conversation swallowed down behind a too-large smile. “How’s it hanging?” 

“Luna said you’d brought some fresh meat. Thought I’d come say hello.” Mike—Eddie assumed the owner and friend Richie had mentioned—turned and smiled at Eddie. 

“Oh, right! Mike, this is Eddie. Eddie, this is Mike Hanlon.” Richie waved an introduction, Mike reached for a handshake, Luna greeted a new customer, and Eddie sat there, staring up at Mike, cold all over as he shook his hand. 

Mike… _Michael Hanlon_ …as in Richie’s mother fucking soulmate. 

Richie was still chattering, distant in Eddie’s ear. 

“Mikey’s the one who convinced me to try HSS with him.”

Eddie watched a sheepish laugh blow through Mike. 

“Yeah,” Mike said. “He’s the one who stuck with it though. The whole process kind of freaks me out, to be honest.”

Eddie broke free of his stupor like a thunderbolt. “That’s not fair,” he snapped. All he could think about was Richie’s letter sitting unclaimed for months, the devastated look in his eye after every time Eddie had to tell him no one wanted him. His tongue rolled on without his permission. “You know people are _partnered_ , right? Did you ever think about what deciding to just fuck off from your soulmate would do to him? Now, he’s just sitting there alone thinking you don’t want him. He could be the coolest, funniest fucking person on earth, and you’d never even know because you didn’t give him a chance!” 

Eddie’s ears rang as he finished, and he snapped his mouth shut in shock, heat crawling up his neck. 

Silence zapped through the air. The whole café seemed to be careening in closer, staring at them with gaping mouths.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbled after a second. He wasn’t sure if he really was, with Richie’s devastated face from half an hour ago fresh in his mind, but he could admit it was inappropriate at least. He dropped his eyes. 

Richie cleared his throat, and Eddie glanced up at him, shame still rattling through him. Richie didn’t look embarrassed. If anything, he looked excited and amused. He looked a little soft, too. Half his mouth quirked up, and he held Eddie’s eyes. 

“Eds here works at the sorting station. He’s very passionate about protecting the company name.” Richie gave him a barely perceptible wink, and Eddie flashed warm all over. 

“Hey, sorry, man,” Mike said. “I guess I never really thought about it like that.” 

Eddie glanced up at him and smiled. 

“No, I’m sorry. I guess I just get a little…attached to my clients.”

The side of Richie’s foot pressed against his under the table, and Eddie swallowed. He was going to Hell. He was flirting with Richie right in front of his soulmate. He was going straight to Hell. 

Mike just smiled again, oblivious. 

“No worries. I ought to get back there, though. It was really nice to meet you, Eddie.”

“You too,” Eddie said, shifting his foot the slightest bit against Richie’s. 

“Give me a call, Rich,” Mike said, and Richie waved as he stepped away. As soon as he was out of earshot, Richie leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table, eyes wide, grinning. 

“Oh my God, you’re a fuckin’ spitfire!” he said gleefully.

Eddie groaned and buried his face in his hands. 

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what the fuck got into me just then. I swear I’m not usually like that around strangers.” 

“Are you kidding?! I feel like a fair maiden! You totally defended the honor of soulmateless schmucks like me! Maybe Mike will actually give a damn about his, now.” 

Eddie dropped his hands, panic bolting through him. 

“Really?” 

Richie leaned back in his seat and nudged Eddie’s foot again. 

“Oh yeah. Nothing gets Mikey moving quite like a good guilt trip.” Richie grinned like that was a good fucking thing. Then, he went right on talking, Eddie nodding dumbly along, the panic in him peaking again and again, drumming and drumming against him. 

Later that night, after Richie walked Eddie home and left like a gentleman—like Eddie didn’t want to haul him in, drag him upstairs, and never let him leave—Eddie hardly slept at all. All he could think about was Mike showing up to claim Richie as his soulmate and then feeling shitty because he knew it was selfish to not want that to happen. He knew it was selfish to want Richie for himself. 

The only way he managed to get some semblance of sleep was by convincing himself that Mike had gone months already without checking his box and that one little scolding wouldn’t change that. 

Then, lo and behold, as Eddie sat at his desk the next day, struggling to keep his eyes open, Michael Hanlon waltzed in to the sound of a tinkling harp. 

“Fuck,” Eddie hissed. He didn’t think his blood pressure had ever spiked so high so fast in his life. 

“Hi,” Mike said with a smile when he stepped up to the desk. “I was hoping you’d be working today.” 

“Here I am,” Eddie said lamely. He wasn’t sure that he managed to sound altogether cordial, but he’d blame that one on how badly his ears were ringing. 

“I wanted to apologize. I thought about what you said, and you’re right. It’s not fair to leave my soulmate hanging.” 

“What do I know, really?” Eddie stumbled, his shoulders hiking in some kind of awful, awkward shrug. 

Mike’s eyebrows twitched together the minutest amount, but Eddie didn’t have the mental processing available to stress about how socially impaired he was. In fact, his _entire_ mental processing capabilities were being used up by the singular thought of, _fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck._

“Well, I’d like to give it a try, anyway. Richie seems much happier after he started coming here.” Mike smiled again. 

Eddie, on the other hand, was not smiling. In fact, he felt pretty sure that he was gaping like a fish, his jaw somewhere by his ankles…maybe in the basement? 

It was in that moment, Mike Hanlon, Richie’s soulmate, standing in front of him, having just told him that Richie was happier even with an empty box, that Eddie decided he was going to do something that would, by all counts, make him a bad person. 

“That’s great, Mike,” Eddie said. A calm washed over him. He was going to be a bad person, and maybe it would all go to shit, but maybe…maybe it wouldn’t. “If you want to write a note or something, I’ll put it in your soulmate’s box.” 

Mike gave him a sheepish smile and tugged an envelope out of his pocket. He passed it over to Eddie. Eddie turned to his computer, typed at it studiously, and moved towards the mail room. 

As soon as he was out of eye-shot, he tucked Mike’s envelope into his own pocket and pulled in a deep breath. 

The soulmate system was crap. 

When he walked back out into the lobby, he was surprised to see Mike still standing there. 

“Is there something else I can help you with?” Eddie asked cautiously. He tried to breathe like he wasn’t absolutely certain he was already caught. Mike frowned. 

“Do I owe you anything?” he asked, and Eddie blinked. 

“It’s on the house,” Eddie said. “I was a jerk.” He didn’t specify when and hoped it would be absolution enough. 

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” Mike stood there a moment longer, and Eddie bit back the urge to ask him again why he was still there. They just stared at each other for a long while, Eddie’s heart slamming in his chest, Mike’s letter burning a hole in his pocket. Finally, Mike shook himself and smiled sheepishly again. “Sorry, can I ask you something?” 

Eddie’s already-flitting heart rolled and skittered. He swallowed. 

“Uh…sure?” he croaked. The letter in his pocket was very, very heavy. It seemed to pull him towards the floor, made him work extra-hard to stand upright in front of Mike’s discerning gaze.

“Is there any sort of, like, vetting of the soulmates? You know, background checks, that kind of thing,” Mike asked. 

Eddie blinked. He had not been expecting a work-related question, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t spit this shit out in his sleep. 

“Oh. I mean, yeah, of course. All our soulmates are vetted before they enter the system. You’ll be totally safe.” 

Mike laughed a little, though Eddie wasn’t quite sure what he’d said that was funny. 

“No, it’s, uh, it’s Richie that I’m worried about,” he said. 

“Richie?” Eddie asked, shock blasting through him. Richie, at six-one, hardly seemed like someone to be worried about. “Why?” 

“It’s stupid. I mean, he hasn’t really gone into the specifics of his soulmate situation, and, like I said, he seems happier after he comes here, so it’s probably dumb, but I just worry about him…He acts like nothing gets to him, but he cares a lot, you know? He’s a good guy, and he deserves to be happy.” 

Eddie found himself trapped for a moment in the dark-rush muddle of fondness and ache that pushed through him. He swallowed, tongue thick in his mouth. 

“He does.” 

Mike nodded. 

“I know you guys are friends, and you seem like a good guy. I know you’ll look out for him.” Mike gave Eddie a soft, genuine smile, and it felt like a blessing of sorts. 

The weight of the letter in his pocket eased up, just a smidge. 

“I’ll do what I can,” Eddie managed after a beat. 

“I’ll see you around, yeah?” 

“Absolutely,” Eddie said, too quickly, but the harp on Mike’s way out seemed to swallow anything else. Eddie let his head fall forward onto the desk and groaned.


	2. Chapter 2

Bev was waiting outside when Bangor’s Soulmate Sorting Station closed, just like she was every Thursday evening. 

Eddie crawled into her front seat and stared straight ahead. 

“Hey, Eddie,” she said, her tone immediately suspicious. 

“I did a bad thing,” Eddie murmured. 

He could see her face morph into surprise, then he watched her try to catch his eye, but he was staring resolutely ahead. 

“A bad thing as in, ‘I accidentally forgot to water your house plants while you were in Milan’ or a bad thing as in, ‘We need to get the fuck out of here right now’?” 

In answer, Eddie stuck his hands into both pockets and pulled out an envelope and the scrap of paper he’d given Richie months earlier, the first time they’d met. 

“I don’t—” Bev started, but Eddie cut her off. 

“They’re Richie’s.” 

“What?” 

Eddie sucked in a breath and braved a glance at her. She was staring, stunned, and Eddie panicked again, just like he had when he’d made his rounds for lock up and saw Richie’s note still tucked untouched in Mike’s box and had snatched it up for himself. 

“Technically, one’s from Richie and one’s for Richie, and I know what you’re going to say, okay? You’re going to say that that’s super illegal and stupid and selfish to take Richie’s note and to not give him the letter his soulmate left for him after seeing how disappointed he was the last six times he’s come in and his soulmate hadn’t left him anything, but okay, the thing is that the soulmate system is such absolute crap! It’s crap! And they’re already friends, and honestly what are the odds that they really are supposed to be together but in a cosmic sort of way and not in the bullshit Hallmark way and also be friends and not already _know_ that they were supposed to be together, you know? But then, it’s like what if they just needed this catalyst, and now, I’m stealing Richie’s letters because I want him for myself, and that’s pathetic because I barely know the guy and he wears awful flannels, Bev, you’d hate him, but I don’t hate him even though I really fucking wish I did. I don’t, and now I did a bad thing, and I’m kind of freaking out and—” 

“Eddie!” Bev snapped, her hand coming down hard on his shoulder and squeezing. He got the feeling, as he clawed oxygen back into his lungs, that she’d been calling his name for a while. He stared at her, wide-eyed and chest-heaving. 

“I’m freaking out,” he repeated meekly. 

She nodded. 

“I can see that.” Her eyes flicked down to the letters and back up. Eddie felt his heart rate hitch again. 

“Don’t judge me!” Eddie wailed. He clutched the letters against his chest like he could hide them from her. Like he hadn’t been bursting to tell her, to tell _someone_ about the giant fucking mess he’d made for himself. 

Bev raised her hands. 

“I’m not judging you!” 

“Promise?!” Eddie’s wild panic was spilling out. He knew he was being loud in the close of her car, but Bev didn’t seem to mind. 

“I promise!” she said, matching his volume. 

“Can we get drunk?!”

“Yeah, we can!” 

“Why are you yelling?!”

“Because you’re yelling!” 

Eddie’s mouth snapped shut. He stared at her a moment longer then slumped down in the passenger seat, groaning again. 

“I’m a bad person,” he said, thumbing the crisp edge where Richie had folded his note over. 

“Oh, we are not getting into this discussion without at least two bottles of wine. Come on.”

Bev shifted the car into gear and pulled off the curb. 

By the time they got to their apartment building, Eddie had rubbed the folded edge of Richie’s note smooth. He followed Bev up the stairs, still staring forlornly down at the letters in his hands. 

Bev’s fiancé, Ben, was in the kitchen when Bev pushed open the door to her apartment. 

“Oh, hey, babe,” he said. “I thought you and Eddie were going for drinks?” 

Bev twisted her key out of the lock and held up the paper bag of alcohol. 

“Tonight requires more alcohol than I can safely drive home on, my dear Benjamin,” she said.

“I did a bad thing,” Eddie said again. Ben grimaced. Jessie, their allergen-riddled dog, nosed pitifully at Eddie’s thigh. He patted her head.

“You want a pork chop?” Ben asked Eddie, offering out the skillet he’d been holding over the stove, as if that would solve his problems. 

Eddie knew it wouldn’t, but it did smell delicious. He nodded, and Ben slid one onto a plate and passed it to Eddie while Bev dug around in the cabinets for mugs. 

“You wanna get smashed with us, Ben?” Bev asked, grinning at him. 

“Why not,” Ben answered with a shrug. He plated up a couple more pork chops and laid them around the small table in their kitchen. 

Once the wine had been de-corked, Bev settled in at the table and leveled Eddie with a _look_. 

“Do you want to fill him in or should I?” Bev asked, nodding her head towards Ben. 

Eddie, mid-bite on what turned out to be a very delicious pork chop, shrugged morosely. Then, he had to sit there with Jessie’s head in his lap and suffer through Bev recounting for Ben every dumb and embarrassing event that had led to Eddie becoming a mail tamperer. As if soulmate boxes even operated under typical postal rules. The whole system was crap.

“Wait, so you just took them?” Ben asked, staring at Eddie incredulously. 

Eddie gave another defeated shrug before downing his wine. Bev graciously poured him another mug-full. 

“Well, what’d they say?” Ben asked. 

Eddie paused with his mug mid-way to his mouth. The letters had been burning a hole in his pocket for the last two hours, and it hadn’t even crossed his mind to read them. He just hadn't wanted them to go to their rightful owners.

“I don’t…know,” he admitted after a moment. 

“You stole them, and you haven’t even read them?” Bev asked. 

“Don’t you think reading them is sort of the point of no return?” Eddie asked, to which Bev raised an unimpressed eyebrow. 

“Do you have any intention of returning them to their rightful owners?” she asked. 

Eddie felt his face blaze. 

“No…” 

“Okay, so read them!” 

“I mean, reading Richie’s is one thing, but reading Mike’s seems like a whole different ball game. He seems really nice,” Eddie said. The lump in his throat was getting bigger and bigger, but the wine was helping everything seem a little less dire. He finished his mug again and poured another. 

“So, just read Richie’s! He’s the one you care about, right?” Bev’s voice was high and excited. Jessie’s tail thumped against the floor in anticipation, but it made Eddie feel very small and very self-conscious about being such a shitty person. 

“I should just put them back,” he said, staring down at his unfinished pork chop and greens. 

“What? No!” 

“I feel shitty, Bev! What if they really would be good together, and I’m just stealing that chance from him? I just want him to be happy…” 

“Eddie…” Bev sighed. “Eddie, look at me.” 

Eddie obediently raised his eyes, but he stole a quick glance at Ben first. Ben was staring at him, not judging, not disgusted, just…sad. 

“How long has it been since someone has made you feel this way, Eddie?” Bev asked him softly. She reached out and ran a hand down his forearm, thumbing at his wrist when her hand stilled. 

Eddie glanced back down. 

“I don’t think I ever have,” he admitted after a beat. 

“We’ve lived in this shitty apartment complex together a lot of years, and I like to think that we’ve been friends a lot of those years, too,” Bev said. Eddie nodded, eyes still downcast. “I don’t think I’ve ever, in all of those years of us being friends, seen you do something for yourself. So, I’m begging you…do this for you. You want him happy, but I want _you_ happy, Eddie.” 

When he glanced back up at her, her face was so full of love that it was almost possible for Eddie to believe that he _wasn’t_ doing a bad thing. Then, he remembered Mike. 

“Fuck…I don’t want Mike to be hurt either, though,” Eddie said. “What if he starts coming in like Richie did, all sad and puppy-dog eyed?”

“Then you’re morally obligated to fall for him, too,” Bev said, grinning, and Eddie huffed. 

He loved Beverly, even as he flicked her hand and leaned back in his chair. Silence settled around them for a moment while Eddie pushed around the last of his pork chop. 

It was Ben who broke the silence, his voice level and brow furrowed. 

“What if you put Mike’s letter in someone else’s box?” he said. “You could find someone whose soulmate never claimed them either, play cupid a little, you know?” 

Eddie’s heart thudded once, twice. Ben had suddenly offered a solution that made Eddie feel not completely disgusting about wanting so desperately to keep Richie for himself. He could be good to Richie, and he could find someone to be good to Mike. 

He could have kissed Ben. 

“That’s brilliant,” Eddie said, a smile spreading across his face. 

“So, you’re gonna do it?” Bev asked. Her excitement was returning, full and contagious. It lit Eddie up inside. 

“Yeah,” he said. Bev squealed, sending Jessie scurrying out from under the table to stare at her, concerned. 

“Yes!” Bev shouted. “Okay, now, come on, Kaspbrak. Give us the goods.” 

Bev’s hand shot out to Eddie’s pocket, and Eddie jerked away, laughing. 

“No, it’s private! He’s mine!” Eddie said.

“Oh, don’t be so stingy! We just want the juicy bits!” 

Bev ended up chasing Eddie through her apartment, both wine-drunk and laughing and trying not to trip over Jessie and Ben and themselves before Eddie managed to get her front door open and sprint down the hall to his own apartment. 

Even though Bev had stopped chasing him once he left her apartment, Eddie still slammed his front door closed, slid down against it, and clutched his prize to his chest. 

He took as steady and deep a breath as he could before flipping open the note he’d tried not to watch Richie scribble in the first place. 

The first thing he noticed were little splatters of blue ink at the top, like Richie’d been tapping the pen while he asked Eddie what it was that he was supposed to be saying. Eddie felt warm all over, thrilled and illicit like never before. 

The second thing he noticed was how absolutely atrocious Richie’s handwriting was. It took him a solid ten minutes to decipher the few messy lines, but eventually, Eddie got there. 

_**Hi Soulmate. (Sorry, I don’t know your name. Is it weird to just call you “Soulmate”?) The guy at the desk said to write you a poem, but I have a feeling that’s something neither of us want. Instead, how about I just bring out the big guns and tell you the joke I sent in to Laffy Taffy that got printed? (That’s right, I’m a published comedian.) Anyway, here’s the joke: What do you call a fancy sea creature? –Richie : )** _

Eddie grinned, groaned, and thumped his head back against the wall. This was the idiot he wanted. The idiot that left a joke in suspense for literal months. The idiot that signed his name with a smiley face. 

Eddie fell asleep much later wondering what exactly one did call a fancy sea creature. Which, he supposed, was Richie’s goal all along. 

The next day, at the beginning of his shift, the first thing Eddie did—after sending a withering glare at the red streamers hanging down from the ceiling—was slide Mike’s envelope out of his coat pocket and lay it on the desk. If he was going to steal Mike’s soulmate, the least he could do was put a real effort into finding him a good replacement. Not that anyone could ever replace Richie. 

He started by combing through Mike’s profile. It felt a little invasive, since Mike was a person he knew in real life and didn’t really _need_ to know that his favorite sex position was “something sensuous, face-to-face” in order to absolve himself from guilt. (Though he did make a mental note that _Richie’s_ profile probably had his favorite sex position on there as well. It did. It said, _Wine em, dine em, sixty-nine em ;)_ , you know, like an asshole. Eddie still felt something illicit streak up his spine.) 

After a long while of pouring over the subtleties of Mike’s profile, occasionally interrupted by a sucker and/or sap needing his help finding love, he moved on to the list of Bangor’s unclaimed soulmates. Of the eligible men who were interested in men in the Greater Bangor Area—Richie not included—there were surprisingly few who Eddie didn’t immediately eliminate based solely on the fact that they didn’t bother with grammar or that were twice Mike’s age. Don’t get him wrong, Eddie was all for coming out late in life—he really couldn’t not be, he’d only come out himself a few years ago—but Mike wanted to hike and to travel and to play soccer on a mountainside or some shit, and Eddie couldn’t really see him with someone who couldn’t keep up. So, he was left with a pool of twenty or so men, four of whom he struck for joking about their dicks, six for being too tall, and another five for wearing glasses before he realized with a jolt that he was trying to pick someone for Mike as far from Richie as possible. 

He blew out a guilty breath and clicked onto the first name he saw. 

When Bill Denbrough’s profile opened on his screen, the soft, timid smile shining back, Eddie knew he’d found him. There was a sure, steady feeling in his gut, and Eddie had spent too much of his life not trusting his gut to look at any others. He skimmed the profile just to be sure, but the guy checked out. 

Eddie marked the box that would alert Bill to the fact that his soulmate had contacted him and stood. He picked up Mike’s letter one last time and marched it back to Bill’s box, feeling, for the first time in two days, that he wasn’t a completely shitty person. 

He spent the rest of the day fighting his way through their various rush hours while trying to decide what the hell to do about Richie’s note still burning a hole in his pocket. 

He also spent a few minutes, right before closing, gazing at Richie’s profile. That wasn’t necessarily a new occurrence for him, but he did notice something as he backed out of it that he’d never seen before. It was a note from the person assigned to pair Richie up. 

It said, _Unmatchable. Pair by proximity._

Eddie stared at that note, unblinking, for a long, long time. 

He’d never hated Hallmark so much in his life. Even when they scammed old ladies out of thousands of dollars. Even when they partnered Richie up with someone else. None of that compared to the rage he felt seeing them say Richie was “unmatchable.” Richie might be a lot of fucking things, but he was not unmatchable. He was not destined to be alone. He did not deserve to be fucking written off, thrown in the fuck-it pile. Richie _believed_ in the system, and he was rewarded by being dumped on the nearest available body. 

Eddie hated every last one of them. And that was when he decided. He wasn’t just going to keep Mike from being Richie’s soulmate, he was going to _be_ Richie’s soulmate. Fuck those fucking fucks who said Richie was unmatchable. Fuck them all. 

A further striking revelation hit him, as he stormed through his rounds for lock-up. 

_Sofishticated._ That’s what you call a fancy sea creature. 

Eddie groaned. This was the idiot that he wanted. 

He took the note out of his pocket and scribbled the punchline under the shaky scrawl of Richie’s words. Then, he added his number and a heart, because he was soft. Then, he panicked about the possibility of Richie calling instead of texting and recognizing his voice and shoved the note back into his pocket. Besides, he thought dully as he scrabbled around in his desk drawer for a fresh sheet of paper, he wanted to keep Richie’s note. Tuck it away in his wallet or some shit. 

When he finally got his hands on some paper, Eddie re-scribbled the punchline and his number—though he specified to _text_ —before folding it quickly, flicking off the lights, and striding out before he could talk himself out of the whole stupid thing. 

Normally, if he wasn’t going out with Bev, he walked straight home after work, but he was feeling a whole lot of _something_ , and he didn’t think he could just go sit in his apartment alone. 

It was pure dumb luck that Richie was at Mike’s café. Eddie wasn’t complaining though, no sir, not one bit. Richie, tucked in the same table Eddie’d sat across from him at, glanced up idly then back down his coffee. Then, his head was whipping back up, eyes wide, grinning. 

“Eddie!” he called. 

Eddie tried to make his heart at least _pretend_ that it had some sense. 

“Hey, Richie,” Eddie answered, unable to stop the smile that crashed across his face. Richie was already standing by the time Eddie consciously made the effort to walk over. 

“What are you doing here, man?” 

“Oh!” Eddie said, because he was nothing if not articulate. He wanted to punch himself. “I, uh, I brought you this.” He dug around in his pocket for a minute then pulled the note out. It was a full-body effort not to burst into flames as he handed it over. 

Richie went uncharacteristically silent, almost frowning down at it unopened in his hand, and Eddie had a single, terrifying second to think that he’d figured it out, that he’d figured it out and that he hated Eddie and that he’d well and truly fucked everything up. Then Richie sunk back into his chair and looked up at Eddie. 

“My soulmate?” he squeaked, and Eddie realized all at once that Richie wasn’t angry. He was scared. 

Eddie frowned and took the seat across from Richie. 

“Hey, what’s wrong? I thought you’d be excited.” That was why he’d done it in the first place. He wanted to make Richie happy, to show him that he was not fucking _unmatchable_ , not to cause him more stress. 

Richie’s frown wobbled, and Eddie watched, helpless, as he shifted it around into a veneer smile. 

“Yeah, no. Sorry, I am. Thanks for bringing this.” 

“Sure,” Eddie said, shifting and still not wholly convinced that Richie was okay. 

“Should I open it?” Richie asked after a moment. 

“I mean, yeah. You’ve been waiting months for it, right?” 

Richie nodded, then nodded again. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Here goes.” Richie sucked in a breath and flicked the note open, looking as absolutely torn-open anxious as Eddie felt. He watched his face very carefully, not daring even to breathe. Then, a corner of Richie’s mouth ticked up, and all the air whisked out of Eddie. “Damn,” Richie said. 

“What?” Eddie asked, too quick. 

“Eds, what do you call a fancy sea creature?” Richie looked up at him, very earnest, very cute, and Eddie was a weak man. He had to fuck with him, just a little. 

“Sofishticated. Why?” Eddie answered, as sincerely as humanly possible. 

Richie huffed and threw his hands up. 

“Does everyone know that fucking joke?”

“It was on a Laffy Taffy wrapper, dude. Of course, everyone knows that joke.” 

“I—” Richie’s mouth hung open for just a second, then he snapped it shut with a huff. He glanced down at the note petulantly before a small smile broke across his face. Eddie’s heart stuttered with it. “He gave me his number.” 

“Oh?” Eddie tried to sound politely curious. Apparently, he didn’t quite hit it because Richie’s eyes flashed back up to him, looking like someone had just punched him in the gut. 

“I won’t need to come in anymore.” 

“Oh.” Eddie swallowed. He…hadn’t thought about that. He realized, with the stunning intensity that can only come from the hindsight of doing something truly reckless, that he hadn’t thought about much other than never having to see Richie look so viscerally disappointed again. “Richie,” he said, then swallowed again. “You know that we can hang out outside of my job, right?” 

Richie’s ramrod shoulders relaxed the tiniest amount. 

“We can?” he asked softly. God, Eddie didn’t stand a chance.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?” Eddie asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“I mean, yeah, but it’s technically work-related. I dunno. Maybe you’d think I was lame in other contexts.” Richie looked so genuinely sheepish that Eddie couldn’t stand it. 

“Richie,” he said softly, reaching out and laying a hand on Richie’s wrist, right above the note _he’d_ written. “I think you’re lame in this context, too,” he said, then grinned. 

Richie’s sheepish face broke into a snort and a grin. 

“Fuck you,” he said. Eddie rubbed his thumb over Richie’s pulse then leaned back, smiling. “Here,” Richie said after a beat. He shifted and pulled his phone out of his pocket. 

“You’re giving me your phone?” Eddie asked, taking it from him with a teasing eyebrow raised. 

“No, asshole. Put your number in.” Richie cleared his throat. “Ya know, for, like, hanging out outside of your job.” 

Eddie was so spellbound by the flush inching up Richie’s cheeks that it took him a moment to process what was being asked of him. When it finally hit though, that Richie was asking for his number, a number he’d _already_ given him, he practically jolted. 

“I don’t have a phone,” Eddie blurted, then cringed. “I mean, uh, mine’s, mine’s broken. I broke it. I have to get a new one.” Richie raised an eyebrow as Eddie all but thrust his phone back in his hands. 

Oh God, he was making a fool of himself. Plus, Richie was frowning again. Why did he have to have such expressive eyes, holy shit?

“Here,” Eddie said, before he could dig himself further into a hole. He pushed a pen towards Richie. “Why don’t you write your number down, and I’ll text you when I’ve got my new phone.” 

Because apparently he had to buy a _whole new fucking phone now_. Jesus. 

Richie’s mouth twitched like he didn’t know if he wanted to smile or frown. 

“I’ll say it again, Eds,” he said after a beat. “You sure know how to make a lady blush.” Richie’s mouth finally decided on a grin, a shit-eating one, to be exact. 

“Fuck off,” Eddie said. He tried to slow his heart while Richie tore a corner off the sofishticated note and scrawled his number onto it. He’d mostly managed by the time Richie handed it over. 

Maybe it was dumb and certainly near-sighted to be doing what he was doing, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it yet. After all, Richie was sitting in front of him, grinning, teasing, and Eddie was happy. 

The next morning, bright and early, Eddie found himself the proud and very stupid owner of a new phone. Richie was the only contact, and he’d bought a bright green case to make sure that he didn’t fuck up and text Richie from the wrong phone. Green for Eddie, black for soulmate. Simple. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?

He’d briefly entertained the idea of being as boring a soulmate as possible to Richie, so that Richie would want _Eddie_ , but it hadn’t taken long to be drawn fully into Richie’s raucous banter. Plus, every time he thought about phasing Richie out of a relationship with his “soulmate” and into one with just plain old Eddie, the word _unmatchable_ flashed before his eyes and his resolve to be the best goddamn soulmate Richie’d never had redoubled. 

By the time he got his hands on his new phone, he’d already been texting Richie all night as his soulmate, and suddenly, he was getting _double_ Richie. 

God, it was the dream. 

Well, mostly the dream. He found himself in a…few sticky situations on the soulmate front. Richie asking for his name—he’d panicked, his name was Eric now—or Richie sending a stupid selfie and asking for one back—no, sorry, the, uh, camera’s broken?—or Richie asking to meet for coffee—wow, I’d love to but I’m allergic to coffee actually. But he’d managed. 

Or, he _thought_ he’d managed, that is, until a couple weeks later when Richie waltzed into the sorting station just before closing to immediately lay down on the floor and groan. 

“Ew, Rich,” Eddie said, setting aside his soulmate phone—he’d been texting Richie back, grinning, whatever. “I know for a fact the custodial staff doesn’t mop like they should.” 

“I’m being catfished,” Richie said. He didn’t move off the floor, just flopped his arms out by his sides. Eddie’s throat went tight.

“What?” 

“Catfished. You know, like where you get into an online relationship with someone but that someone’s not who they say they are?”

“I know what catfishing is. I’m not stupid,” Eddie snapped. “Why do you think that?” 

“‘Cause Eric, my soulmate, he doesn’t want to meet up with me.” 

“Maybe he’s busy?” 

“He won’t send me a picture either.” 

Eddie shrugged.

“Maybe his camera’s broken?” Eddie offered, and Richie huffed. 

“He won’t even talk to me.” 

“What are you talking about? You guys talk all the time.” Eddie went stiff as soon as he said it. 

Richie’s head lolled over, a small crease pulling between his eyebrows. 

“How do you know that?” he asked cautiously. 

Eddie swallowed. Shrugged. 

“Just figured that’s who you’re texting all the time.” It was a piss-poor excuse, and Eddie knew it. Richie was never on his phone when he and Eddie hung out, which had been a real concern of his, just from a logistical standpoint. If Richie was constantly texting his soulmate while he was with Eddie, it would be Eddie’s phone constantly buzzing. 

The little crease between Richie’s eyebrows didn’t move, but he did roll his head back so his eyes were on the ceiling. 

“Yeah, well, I mean _talk_ to me talk to me. Like, on the phone.” He sat up quickly, eyes wide. “Holy shit, what if my soulmate’s a woman?” 

Eddie bit back a choked laugh. 

“Man,” Richie went on, ass still plastered to the floor. “I’m, like, completely homosexual. I don’t know what I’d do if my soulmate turned out to be a woman.” 

“Would it really be that bad?” 

“Well, I mean, no…I just wouldn’t be able to have that kind of relationship with her. I’d be really disappointed. I like my soulmate. I want it to go somewhere, you know?” 

“You do?” Eddie asked, too quickly. 

The anxious set to Richie’s mouth tumbled away, and he glanced down to Eddie’s shoes under the desk. 

“I kind of have to, don’t I?” Richie asked after a moment. 

A sick, creeping feeling settled itself deep in Eddie’s gut. All the guilt…it was finally catching up to him. He was a bad person, and he’d done a bad thing. He’d manipulated his way into Richie’s life. Lied to him. Caused him pain. Forced him into a situation where he didn’t know the whole story. Taken away his choice. 

God, he was just as bad as his mother. 

“You don’t have to do anything,” Eddie managed around the lump in his throat. He wanted to say more, to tell Richie that he really didn’t have to do anything, that Eddie was the one who’d fucked it all up, that he'd just wanted Richie to be happy, but he thought if he opened his mouth again, he’d be sick. 

Richie sighed, rolled his face back up towards the ceiling. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he said softly. Then, the words were falling from his mouth in a rush, like he couldn’t stop them. “It just doesn’t seem fair to not go after what’s right in front of me because I’m waiting around for a guy who won’t even talk to me.” 

Richie went silent and still as the words left him. He pushed himself to his feet slowly and turned to Eddie. Eddie hadn’t found his voice yet. 

“I’m sorry,” Richie said. There was no humor in his face, and he looked almost as pale as he had on the anniversary of his father’s death. He swallowed. “That’s…can you please forget I said that? I’m sorry.” 

Eddie felt like there was sludge in his brain. He was still spiraling a little from the realization that he’d turned into his mother after all these years, and Richie was staring at him, looking so desperate and apologizing, even though Eddie didn’t know why, and he just wanted to make Richie happy. He nodded dumbly, and Richie’s jaw set. 

“Thanks,” he said, a muscle by his ear jumping. Eddie wanted to touch it, but he was glued to his seat, glued to his mistakes. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around, okay, Eds?” 

Before Eddie could say anything else, Richie was gone. 

After his shift, Eddie locked up and walked home in a daze. He’d told Bev and Ben he’d watch a movie with them that night, but he was so emotionally drained that he dumped his clothes at the door and just crawled into bed. He did pause to shoot them a text before he fell into the dark oblivion, because he might be a bad person but he was not inconsiderate. 

He woke up sometime later, in an even bigger daze than he’d gone to bed in, to his phone buzzing beside him. He groaned, squinting into the screen’s brightness to see Richie’s dumb face lighting up his screen. It took him a couple tries to get it answered, just because he was also struggling in his half-sleep state to make sense of life on the whole and also the man he had a massive fucking crush on. It was a big feat. 

“Rich?” he asked, disoriented all over. 

“Holy shit,” Richie breathed on the other end of the phone. “I can’t believe you answered.” 

“Yeah, asshole, you called me,” Eddie said groggily. He had to focus all of his attention on not falling back asleep, but even then, it was questionable at best. His train of thought veered sharply—did he lock the front door, why couldn’t he remember the capital of the Czech Republic, did turtles really have three sets of eyelids—and then he remembered that he was talking to Richie. “It’s the middle of the night, Richie. What’s wrong?”

“I—nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk to you.” 

Even half-asleep, Eddie’s heart squeezed happily at Richie wanting to talk to him. 

But still, he wanted to go back to sleep. 

“We’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Still on for lunch?” 

Richie was quiet for so long that Eddie was almost conscious of the drool gathering on his screen. Not conscious enough to do anything about it, but conscious of it. 

“Eddie?” Richie breathed. Eddie startled at the sound of his voice. 

“Yeah?”

“Shit. Shit. Yeah, uh...I’ll pick you up at eleven.”

“M’kay,” Eddie murmured. He liked the sound of Richie’s voice so close in his sleep. “Night, Rich.” 

“Goodnight, Eds,” Richie answered softly. 

Eddie didn’t bother opening his eyes as he put his phone back on the bedside table, just tugged his covers up higher and exhaled deeply. 

It was weird that he couldn’t remember the capital of the Czech Republic…

Then, Eddie was asleep, and despite having gone to bed at a ridiculously early time, he didn’t wake up until fifteen minutes before Richie was going to be there. 

“Fuck,” he cursed, jumping out of bed and sprinting into the shower. He didn’t even give the pipes time to heat up, and he certainly didn’t have time to blow-dry his hair like he’d wanted. He was jumping around trying to get his pants on when he heard a knock at the door. 

His heart leapt up into his throat. 

“Coming,” he shouted. He ran out of his room tugging at his zipper with one hand and trying to push closed the buttons of his shirt with the other. “Hey, Rich,” Eddie said, flinging the door open, eyes still on his buttonholes. “Sorry, I’m running a little behind. Do you want to—” Eddie glanced up, the words catching in his throat. 

There Richie stood, looking like he’d brushed his hair for maybe the first time ever, in a nice button-up and pressed pants, blushing, holding a bouquet of flowers. 

Eddie’s mouth went so dry he felt like he could strike a match on his tongue. 

“Hi,” Richie said. Eddie’s eyes were glued to the flowers, heart pounding. “There was a very nice girl named Beverly in the lobby who told me which apartment was yours. And, uh, I dunno, maybe the flowers are dumb cause I know how you feel about that cheesy Hallmark stuff, but I really wanted to do this right, so these—these are for you.” Richie pressed the flowers out towards Eddie. 

Eddie’s eyes snapped up. 

“Why?” he asked. His blood was racing through his ears like church bells ringing. His hand shook as he took the flowers from Richie. 

“Eddie, about last night,” Richie started, shifting, hands wringing without the flowers to hold. 

Eddie frowned. He wasn’t still mulling over whatever had upset him at the sorting station, was he? 

“Richie, don’t—” Eddie started, but Richie cut him off. 

“No, just…just let me get this out, okay?” 

Eddie nodded dumbly. He watched as Richie sucked in a shaky breath, eyes closed. Eddie knew the feeling. He took quick stock of himself, like that would stave off the anxiety he could feel creeping up around him. 

He could feel water droplets sliding off the ends of his hair, down his neck, seeping into his collar. He could smell his long-cold coffee in the kitchen, the cologne Richie wore mingling with it, woodsy and rustic and _Richie_. He could hear the elevator whirring down the hall, music drifting in through his open kitchen window. He could taste the sugar of his toothpaste, the alcohol of his mouthwash. He could see, just from the corner of his eye, a flash of neon green against his counter top. 

He turned his face towards it slowly. Richie was speaking, far away, muted and muffled by the drown of blood in his ears. 

“Oh fuck,” Eddie whispered. 

Green was for Eddie, black was for soulmate, and he knew for a fact he’d left the green phone exactly where it was all night. Which meant…when Richie had called him last night, he’d been expecting his _soulmate_ , but it was _Eddie_ who’d answered, _Eddie_ who’d told him, flat-out, that he’d been lying to him this whole time. 

“Fuck!” Eddie shouted. He caught the barest flash of Richie flinching before the door slammed in his face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eddie hissed. He couldn’t breathe. Holy shit, he couldn’t breathe, every time he tried, it caught like fishhooks in his lungs, holy fuck. 

“Eddie! Come on, just talk to me,” Richie called, his voice close even through the door. Fuck, too close. 

Eddie ran. He literally ran. He ran as far from Richie as being trapped inside his shitty apartment allowed and found himself hunched down in the far-corner of his bedroom, trying to breathe, trying to breathe. He couldn’t breathe. 

Richie’s voice got closer. Fuck, he couldn’t breathe, and he'd forgotten his lock never caught on the first try, and now, Richie sounded like he was standing right there outside of his bedroom, voice low and ragged.

“Eds, please, just talk to me,” Richie said, but Eddie could barely hear him, could barely do anything except try and hold his lungs together. “I’m not mad at you.” 

Eddie sucked in a jagged breath around the knot in his throat. 

“You should be,” he called back, his voice brittle and hollow. 

“Well, I’m not.”

“I lied to you, Richie,” Eddie choked out. Then, he was crying, gasping, gagging as he tried and failed to just fucking breathe. 

“Eds, I’m gonna come in, okay?” Richie said, and Eddie watched in horror as the doorknob began to twist. 

“No!” he wailed, and the door froze, half-open. He could see Richie’s shoulder on the other side. If he could get just half a breath in, _half_ a breath into his lungs, he’d be okay. 

“Eds…” Richie said softly. Eddie could hear how deep his frown went. Hated himself for hurting Richie. Cried harder. 

“Just…just give me a minute,” Eddie gasped when he could. 

Richie sighed softly, but he pulled the door closed again. 

Okay. He was fine. Everything was fine. His body was telling him he was dying, but realistically, he was fine. His limbs, fingers, and toes were all present and accounted for. He counted them slowly. His heart was beating, still beating, even though it was pounding. His throat wasn’t _really_ closing up, even though it felt like it was. 

Eddie pulled in a breath, held it, pushed it back out. Pulled, held, pushed. 

Richie would still be on the other side of the door when Eddie calmed down. He’d said he wasn’t angry. Everything would be fine. 

Eddie took a few more deep, careful breaths before he felt like his heart wasn’t about to leap out of his chest. His hands were still shaking, but it would be a while before that stopped. Panic attacks always did that to him, and he’d need another shower for all that he’d sweated during it. He tried not to think about it as he scrubbed the tears off his cheeks and pushed himself to his feet. 

Richie was—as Eddie’d promised himself—still there when he managed to get a shaking grip around the doorknob strong enough to pull it open. He was sitting in the floor, his back against the door jam, once again holding the flower bouquet. Eddie didn’t know when he’d dropped it, and he was sad to see that it had taken a hard fall whenever he _had_ dropped it. The baby’s breath was askew, two of the daisies looked like they’d been to a pull-happy dentist, and one of the roses had a snapped neck. 

Richie cradled it like a child, and when he looked up, concern written all over his face, Eddie had to remind himself that everything was okay. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and he could handle whatever getting out of it meant. 

“You okay?” Richie asked softly, his neck craned back to stare up at Eddie. Eddie nodded. “You wanna sit?” 

Eddie huffed, managing something of a smile as he stepped over Richie’s long legs and sunk down the wall beside him. 

“What is it with you being on the floor for big conversations?” Eddie asked. He’d been trying for humor, but he wasn’t entirely sure that his wrung-rag voice conveyed it. Richie gave him a small smile anyway and shrugged. 

“I like being on the floor. Makes it harder to bump my head.” 

Eddie smiled again, and it came a little easier. He still had a hard wrench of anxiety churning his insides around, but Richie wasn’t running. That had to count for something. 

“I’m really sorry, Richie,” he murmured after a moment. Richie’s head whipped around so quick that Eddie flinched. 

“Why are you sorry? I’m the one who showed up here and made you have a panic attack.” Richie sounded disgusted, and Eddie realized with a pang that Richie was disgusted at himself. 

“No,” he said firmly. “I had a panic attack because I acted like an idiot.” Richie held his eye, and _fuck_ , Eddie would miss him. He swallowed. “I’m so sorry. I should never have lied to you.” 

“You were trying to do a nice thing, man,” Richie said softly. He took a hand off the bouquet and pressed it against Eddie’s forearm. 

Eddie shook his head. He didn’t deserve Richie making excuses for him, and he didn’t deserve his touch. He pulled his arm away, swearing to himself that he wouldn’t cry again. 

“I wasn’t,” he said. “I was being selfish.” 

“How is talking to a guy whose soulmate didn’t want him selfish, Eddie?” Richie asked. He sounded insistent and soft, and Eddie suddenly remembered Mike saying how much Richie felt even when he was hiding it. The memory felt like a grater down his spine. 

“He did want you,” Eddie choked. He couldn’t hold Richie’s eyes anymore. It was too much. Too painful. He’d miss Richie so fucking much. “I just wanted you, too.” 

“What?” Richie’s voice held every ounce of the stunned hurt that had plagued Eddie’s worst nightmares. 

Eddie closed his eyes against the sound, pulled his knees up to his chest, told himself he could do this, he had to. 

“It was Mike, Richie,” he murmured. 

“Wait, what?” Richie asked again. Eddie squeezed his eyes shut tighter, nodded. Richie let out a shocked breath. “Wow, okay, that’s—we’re definitely gonna have to come back to that one, but Eddie…” 

Eddie didn’t open his eyes. Just hugged his knees tighter, tried to breathe. 

Richie’s hand landed soft on his shoulder, his thumb rubbing gently, a live-wire on his nerves. 

“Eddie,” he tried again, and Eddie was a weak, stupid man. He opened his eyes, right into Richie’s wounded expression. He had to stop himself from immediately wrenching them closed again. “You wanted me?” Richie murmured. The line of Richie’s brow was dark and furrowed behind his glasses. Eddie nodded minutely, and when Richie exhaled, Eddie felt it on every inch of his skin. His thumb pressed firmly into the meat of Eddie’s shoulder. “What about your soulmate?” 

Eddie ducked his head further.

“I don’t have one,” he admitted softly, closing his eyes to another hard rush of air leaving Richie. After that, Richie was quiet for a long time. 

“Eds, why didn’t you say anything?” he asked finally. 

“My bosses don’t want us saying we don’t use the program,” Eddie mumbled. “But then, I just…I saw how much you wanted your soulmate to be someone you could believe in. I didn’t want to take that from you,” Eddie said weakly. Richie shook his head, moved his hand up so that it pressed around the curve of Eddie’s neck. Eddie could feel his pulse dancing beneath the tip of Richie’s thumb. He didn't deserve it. Didn't deserve him. 

“I meant, why didn’t you say anything about having feelings for me?” Richie was staring so earnestly, so desperately, that Eddie’s thoughts stumbled. 

“I…I didn’t want to get in the way of your soulmate relationship.” It sounded stupid, being said out loud like that. Especially considering that was exactly what he’d done. Richie just shook his head again. 

“Eddie, I never cared about the soulmate thing. I only ever came back for you.” 

Then, it was Eddie’s turn to push out a startled breath. He stared at Richie, and Richie stared back. 

“But what about what you said about the soulmate system making you feel hopeful? And you were so disappointed when nothing came for you.” 

“Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. But only because I didn’t know you were an option.” Richie smiled a little and scrubbed his thumb over Eddie’s jaw. “It’s like you said. You can be just as happy without your soulmate as you can be unhappy with them.” Richie stroked Eddie’s jaw again before pulling his hand away and dropping his eyes to the flowers in his lap. Eddie tried not to miss the touch. It didn’t work. 

Richie went on, “But, for what it’s worth, I was happy with you as my soulmate.” 

“Yeah?” 

Richie grinned down to the flowers, toying with the burlap wrap around them. 

“Yeah. I kept thinking, well, if Eddie’s already got a soulmate, at least _my_ soulmate acts exactly like him.” 

“Shut up,” Eddie squeaked, but Richie just flashed his grin up at him before leaning his head back against the wall. Eddie’s eyes scraped over the long line of his throat, the peak of his Adam’s apple, felt heat rising up the back of his neck.

“I really should have known it was you the minute you pulled ‘sofishticated’ out of your ass,” Richie said. He cut a lazy grin at Eddie out of the corner of his eye, and Eddie snorted. 

“I couldn’t help myself.” 

“Nah, it was cute.” Eddie smiled down into his knees, then unwound his arms from around them, stretched them out beside Richie’s. “So, ol' Mikey got saddled with me, huh?” Richie asked, grinning wickedly at Eddie out of the corner of his eye. 

The word “unmatchable” flashed again in Eddie’s mind, and he recoiled a bit. 

“The whole system is fucked up,” Eddie bit sharply. “They don’t care about anything but maximizing profit.” Eddie clenched his fist until his nails bit sharply into his palm. He couldn’t stand the thought of Richie not knowing how _wanted_ he was, and he sure as shit wouldn’t be the one to tell Richie how Hallmark had deemed him unlovable. 

“But wait, Mike met up with his soulmate? His name’s Bill.” 

Eddie felt a flush creeping back up his neck. He cleared his throat. 

“Yeah…I, uh, I felt pretty shitty about stealing your note and leaving him hanging, so I played matchmaker a little,” Eddie admitted sheepishly. Richie was quiet. 

When he finally found the nerve to glance over at him, Richie was already looking. 

“Eds,” he murmured. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Do you still want me?” 

Eddie’s heart thudded painfully. 

“Yes,” he said back, softly. One corner of Richie’s mouth ticked up. 

“Can I kiss you?” he whispered. Richie’s gaze darted nervously back and forth between his eyes, but Eddie didn’t bother answering.

Instead, he pushed close and caught Richie’s lips in his own. Richie gasped into the kiss, his hand coming up to clutch the back of Eddie’s shirt and crush him closer. Eddie did not mind. Not one bit. He pressed one hand against the hinge of Richie’s jaw, the other through the curl of his hair, licked into Richie’s mouth, and greedily, eagerly swallowed down the hungry little sounds Richie made as he pressed them closer. 

God, he felt like a teenager again, making out rough and sloppy like his mom would walk in on them any minute. Eddie couldn’t help but grin, and Richie kissed his teeth, pressed a soft kiss to his upper lip, then his lower, then his chin and cheek and nose and then Eddie was laughing. 

“God, stop,” Eddie laughed, but he hoped Richie never did. Richie smiled and kissed him one last time, soft on the lips. 

Then, he fell back against the wall, kiss-drunk and grinning with his arm still wrapped around Eddie. 

“Eddie Spaghetti, you just rocked my world,” Richie said, smiling dopily up at the ceiling. His hand rubbed a soft pattern into Eddie’s back. 

Eddie laughed and settled against his chest. His back would hate him later for sitting so long on the floor, but he couldn’t be bothered to give a damn right then. 

“We literally just kissed, jackass,” Eddie said. 

“I’m a changed man.” 

“I dread hearing your stream of consciousness after we have sex,” Eddie teased, pinching into the soft above Richie’s hip, drawing a yelp out of him. Richie retaliated by tugging the hair on the crown of Eddie’s head sharply, and Eddie’s head snapped up, eyes wide and dick, admittedly, interested. He swallowed.

“We get to have sex?” Richie asked, his own eyes so wide that Eddie couldn’t help but kiss him again, just a little. 

“God, I hope so,” Eddie murmured into Richie’s open mouth. Richie groaned, and suddenly, he was toppling sideways and dragging Eddie with him. The flowers crushed under their weight. 

“Now you’ve killed me. Way to go,” Richie said against Eddie’s lips. 

“RIP Trashmouth.” 

“He lived a good life and died doing what he loved.” 

“Suffocating poor flower bouquets?” Eddie guessed with a grin, but Richie gasped and shifted them so he could get a hand around the stems. When he pulled them free, they looked completely ravaged. (Eddie didn’t really mind. He thought it was kind of fitting for a gift from Richie, excited and beautiful and a little broken. He was absolutely keeping them for the rest of his life, broken or not.)

“Oh no!” Richie breathed. “I’m sorry,” he said, letting go of Eddie to try and smooth them back into shape. It did not work. “I’ll buy you more.” 

Eddie took them from him and set them out of harm’s way.

“You better,” Eddie said, settling back against Richie’s side. 

“Every week.” 

“Every _day_ ,” Eddie challenged, prodding a finger into Richie’s chest. 

“Every hour, if you want, Eds. Don’t test me.” 

Eddie grinned. 

“Every hour, then.” 

Eddie did not, in fact, have fresh flowers by the time the next hour rolled around, but Richie was so thoroughly otherwise _occupied_ that Eddie couldn’t hold it against him. 

Besides, he felt good about his chances of having thousands more hours of missed flowers with Richie by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you all thought, and if anyone's been hanging around a while and has noticed that the stuff I'm writing has just gotten progressively longer and longer...well, that might be more than a coincidence. *wink wink* Stay tuned, kids.


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